Lessons in founding a multinational diagnostics startup: the good, the bad and the ugly

The pain in a market directs the needs of products and their commercial success. Once defined, the market requires a value proposition which answers the specific needs of the end-user, as well as, enabling the venture to compete in the arena of existing commercial products, however, limited their abilities. We describe how a eureka moment in the creation of an electro lateral flow immunosensor, provided us with a proprietary idea, whose patent went largely unchallenged, while providing us with a unique quantitative point-of-care device, that allows us to enter untried markets, such as, here, stroke survivors who have returned home. Our system in development, combines disposable, one-step operation, self-contained kits, to a stroke biomarker, whose results obtained within 15 minutes, will provide the survivor, his family and supervising doctor, with the biomarker's trend over time. Analytics in the blockchain/cloud will be exhibited via an app, or the doctor's computing system. If and when needed, the patient will be warned and urged to go to the hospital for further treatment, hopefully before a recurrent secondary stroke occurs. We describe the pitfalls, hopes and issues behind the development of the invention in startups